Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1887-10-27
THE VERSATILE MAN.
A Myriad Minded Individual Known a
Over the Land.

A Myriad Minded Individual Known AN
Over tho Land.
Swift T. Totum was the most versa
tile man I ever saw. Talk of myriad
minded Shakespeare! Why, Shakes
peare wasn't patch to Totum. Totum
had more minds in half day than
Shakespeare could boast of during his
mortal career. He would swing around
through the entire realm OF the arts,
sciences and humanities as readily and
as swiftly as the New England wealth
ercock will describe the horizons cir
Gle. and he would go around the former
quite as often as the New England
weathercock makes its circuit in search
of the wind that blows.
Swift T. Totum was, in fact, Won
derful mana wonderfully wonderful
man, not to make it too strong-and /
have wondered what the world would
have done without him. Totum
wasn't one Of your machine men, who
spend their existence in one con-
tinuous, monotonous movement; not
bit of it. He was grand and COM
prehensive machine shop, laboratory,
atelier, studio and study rolled into
one. There was nothing which he
hadn't been into-and out of-and the
only cloud upon Totum's lifs was the
comparatively small number of ave-
nues which the world of matter and
the world of thought opened up to his
superabounding versatility.
Mat TofuY,, oo,,1r in ~
and you found him filled to overflow
ing with, say, scheme to ameliorate
the condition of pastry cooks; an hour
later he was deep in the investigation
of some reconcile theory of his own
relative to the ancient sun-myth; at
monday he was immersed in some
grand business enterprise; the after
noon was given to the elaboration of
some alleged discovery in physics; the
political regeneration of the world oc-
cupied his evening hours, and he re-
tired dreaming of an inchoate patent
process which was to revolutionize the
custom of wearing stockings inside
ones boots instead of outside.
And then there was nothing small or
secretive about Totum. Whatever he
did, or rather whatever he began to do.
he Invariably took the world into his
confidence. He wasn't the man to
shut himself up in secret when he had
one of his vast enterprises on foot. He
loved company; the more of it he had,
the better; and he would kindly talk
over his impending scheme for hours.
or as long as any one would listen to
him, and then-why, by that time his
new idea which completely over
Swallowed and dwarfed its predecessor.
grand as that had seemed when viewed
by itself.
Totum never started out to sharpen
lead pencil or draw the cork out of
an ink bottle but he had at least half a
dozen wondering spectators, and.
though it usually ended in somebody
else sharpening the pencil and
in somebody else drawing the cork,
that fact did not initiate against his
greatness. 1t only showed that mind
like his, teeming with a redundancy of
ideas, was so trammeled by time and
occasion that it was impossible for
him to put any of them into concrete
form.
For like reason Totum never sue
ceeded in learning foreign language,
ancient or modern, though he had
made many essays in both directions;
and his having in literature was of the
fimsiest description, while his infor-
nation upon the practical affairs of
life was exceedingly tenuous. His
mind was constructed upon so grand
scale, and he attempted SO much and
so many things, that he could not pin
himself down long enough to one sub
ject to master it; he could not inn
prove one opportunity without losing
hundreds of other opportunities.
If Totum could have divided his cor
poreal substance into a thousand dis
tinct Municipalities, he would easily
have furnished them all from his own
brain with vocations and avocations
sufficient to last them all to the crack
of doom. 1t was really too bad in Provi-
dence to endow Totum with so versatile
a mind without providing an adequacy
of physical functions and a sufficiency
of time to accompany it. Had his
body been at all commensurate with
his mind, and his life been extended
over centuries instead of through
paltry threescore and ten at the out
side, this world would one day be a
very different world than we now
find it.
But, alas! Totum's carrying powers
were no match to his creative. He
died without accomplishing any thing.
He had all through his life ''bitten off
more than he could chaw." He was
chewing ever-he absorbed nothing.
But Totum was most excellent
chewer Transcript.